Install some stuff on Xubuntu 16.04

I recently upgraded my machine to Xubuntu 16.04 after almost 3 years of using Xubuntu 14.04. This is always an exciting (or frustrating) time as it allows me to reinstall most of my stuff and keep my machine updated.

This post will just detail how I install/reinstall on Xubuntu 16.04 the common software and tools I use everyday as well as the not-so-common ones that I keep for special ocassions so that I don’t forget them in the future.

Set Proxy for the Shell (bash)

I usually set my proxy in the bash config file (.bashrc) if I need to access the web through the shell.

Atom

The first thing I reinstalled was Atom because every developer/programmer needs a good text-editor. A few years ago, this spot was reserved for Sublime Text (still one of the best text editors EVER) but recently I’ve found myself liking and using Atom more. Atom gets plus points for being open-source – something that Sublime is not (probably one of the few bad points with Sublime for me).

If you’re using ‘buntu, installing Atom is easy. Just download the .deb then install it using:

sudo dpkg --install atom-amd64.deb

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is my go-to Office Suite. Xubuntu comes packaged with LibreOffice Writer, Calc, and Math but not the entire Suite. What I usually do is remove the built-in LibreOffice package and replace it with one from the LibreOffice Fresh PPA.

First, you remove all the built-in LibreOffice packages.

sudo apt remove libreoffice-*

Then add the PPA to your software sources.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt update

Then install LibreOffice.

sudo apt install libreoffice

If the above method doesn’t work, we can try using snaps.

sudo apt install snapd

sudo snap install libreoffice

PDF Chain

PDF Chain is a GUI for the PDF Toolkit (PDFtk). For those times I need to combine or split pdf files.

QGIS

There are a lot of ways to install QGIS depending on the version that you want and if you want the repos to be based on the ubuntugis-unstable PPA.

There are 3 main versions of QGIS that you can install on your machine:

QGIS LTR (Long Term Release)

A Long Term Release is a special QGIS release that receives updates and bug-fixes for up to 1 year. Afterwhich it undergoes a feature freeze where no new features are added. This is suitable for people who want a version of QGIS that does not vary often. The current LTR is 2.14 with the latest version being 2.14.12. There are talks of increasing the LTR support time to 2 years but it won’t be implemented, if approved, until QGIS 3.0.

To install the QGIS LTR, add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list

QGIS releases a new version every 4 months. This is more bleeding edge than the LTR release and often contains newer features. However, this version also comes with the occasional bugs due to these new features. Get this release if you always want the latest version of QGIS on your machine.

To install the Latest Release, add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list

Steam

When you first run Steam, it will ask you to download certain packages. Install these packages.

Update Steam and start playing.

If you’re behind a firewall, you won’t be able to play but you’ll be able to update steam through the command line.

steam update

mkusb

Xubuntu 16.04 doesn’t come with Startup Disk Creator. You can still install Startup Disk Creator but mkusb is a little bit better because it uses dd to create the live-usbs. You can install it in your machine by:

Pinta

Pinta is a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Paint. For simple graphics manipulation. It’s 1.6 version is part of the Ubuntu Official Repository. The pinta-stable PPA has no release for 16.04 while the pinta-daily PPA has.